A former mentor gave me some valuable advice once about this that didn't make sense til years later. Basically, I got a computer science degree while working full time minimum wage - in a very competitive program and high cost of living area. It was extraordinarily hard, orders of magnitude harder than anything else I've ever done, just trying to survive and not starve and somehow find the time to do well in my studies.
He said something like "if you keep burning the candle at 110% like you have been for long, you'll find that you often can find something deep within you to keep going, but eventually, this can run dry, and it doesn't really regenerate. It takes something from you that you aren't going to get back."
I don't mean minor stuff like, "oh I'm really tired today and I don't want to go to school." I'm talking like, very difficult coursework + stressful job + major life calamities and personal loss all compiling at the same time in a way that you just want to crawl into a pit and die, yet, you keep going - that kind of willpower/stamina whatever you want to call it.
He was right. I think he was alluding somewhat to burnout, which I think is related but somehow different - I am not the same person I was before that endeavor, and don't feel I really ever "healed" from it. It's very difficult to describe. feels a little like anhedonia, like a part of me has been missing since then. When I get in similar circumstances now, I find it harder to summon whatever it was inside of me that "kept going."
I expect I'm still healing because I'm only ~10 years removed from this, but, sometimes I'm not sure.
About seven years ago, I was working full-time at an amazing but consuming job, raising a family, and surviving the pandemic. I was also writing every single day on a large textbook. Then within the span of about six months, my dog got sick and died, my mom got cancer, and a few friends and family members died unexpectedly. I kept writing every day while dealing with all of that. I literally wrote in the waiting room while my mom was getting CT scanned. I kept working on the book as the pandemic reared its head and politics went insane.
I got through it all and finished the book, but I haven't felt the same since. It's like some nerve in my soul got burned to a cinder and is no longer able to fire.
I've spent a lot of time in therapy which has been amazing, but I'm still not what I'd call all better.
My hypothesis is that I spent so much time compartmentalizing emotions like anxiety, grief, sorrow, and hurt in order to keep moving forward that I got too good at stuffing them in a box. The only way to avoid being overwhelmed by them was to sever my connection to all of my feelings, which meant I lost access to joy, humor, whimsy, and passion too.
I'm working to rebuild that connection, but it doesn't come back easily.
I’m not sure I can connect to any particular moment or chain of events (that will probably take some soul searching) to point to as a cause, but I’ve become conscious of a reduced (though not entirely severed) connection to my emotions in recent years. There are times where feelings will come through with strength similar to how they used to, but much of the time sensations are dulled. This has naturally had negative effects on my ability to make choices purely based on personal pleasure, too, which can be a problem when e.g. I’m spending an evening out with a friend and they ask what I’d like to do — sometimes answering is difficult because even if I have a preference, it’s not surfacing itself which makes it seem that the decision makes no difference.
Something that helped was re-connecting with the past version of myself by going through some truly ancient computer backups. To some extent it put me back into my prior mindset, and so now at least I’m doing things explicitly because I want to and find doing them enjoyable.
I can only theorize on what might finish returning me back to how I used to be, but I think probably the most beneficial thing would be a hard break from most of my responsibilities for an extended period of time which I can then dedicate to myself, probably somewhere between 6 months and 2+ years. That’s not exactly practical though because I have a mortgage and bills to pay.
> This has naturally had negative effects on my ability to make choices purely based on personal pleasure, too, which can be a problem
I've been rehabbing from a severely broken ankle the past nine months and in physical therapy the other day, my therapist said, "You'll be in a better headspace if we come up with a concrete goal to work towards. What's something you'd like to be able to do with your body that we can work towards that would be fun?"
And I just, like, stared ahead blankly for a while without having an answer.
> Something that helped was re-connecting with the past version of myself by going through some truly ancient computer backups.
That's a good idea. I do feel like part of my internal disconnection also has to do with being disconnected from my past self as well. It's like I sort of forgot who I am.
Wow, we are living a lot of the same life story. That feeling where I imagine would it would feel like to have something enjoyable to look forward to, but I'm not. Hoping that I will somehow come to terms with my grief for a death of someone close to me. I keep kind of grinding it out in my tech jobs, maybe not as bad as yours. After that death, after covid, the world just wasn't fun anymore. I have talked to a therapist about it, but didn't get anyway. What I wish I had was a new mission in life. I was so excited to go to grad school, loved my first job. My family is fine. They need more of me probably.
> That feeling where I imagine would it would feel like to have something enjoyable to look forward to, but I'm not.
Oof, yeah, I know that feeling.
> I have talked to a therapist about it, but didn't get anyway.
My understanding is that variance in therapists is very high. Given that it's one of the most intimate relationships you can have, it really requires finding the right one that fits your specific needs. It may be worth trying to find another.
> Something that helped was re-connecting with the past version of myself by going through some truly ancient computer backups. To some extent it put me back into my prior mindset, and so now at least I’m doing things explicitly because I want to and find doing them enjoyable.
Heh, this is so poignant for me, but for me, it's going back and reading old journals/writings - I write a lot, so much that most people don't want to read it all, so a lot of it when I was younger went into journals. One entry in particular was after I had just lost my father, in front of my eyes, in kind of a violent/traumatic way - I was in my early early 20's and had no idea what I had been experiencing was some kind of PTSD, but knew enough to know something weird was happening to me, so I wrote everything down in a little journal by hand.
Recently, in a fit of frustration, I picked it up (this is now 15 or so years ago) and I found an entry I had forgotten about - a wildly delusional (at that time, if you had known me, you would have considered it delusional) passage where I aspired to lift myself out of my situation and said I wanted to study CS, or as I put it that time, "something with computers," and even named my dream university I ended up transferring to in the end. This was many years before any of it ended up becoming reality, and I became proud of my past self, and I felt that connection a little bit of what you are describing. Until I read that I had no idea that where I ended up was exactly where I intended, I had lost sight of that.
> My hypothesis is that I spent so much time compartmentalizing emotions like anxiety, grief, sorrow, and hurt in order to keep moving forward that I got too good at stuffing them in a box. The only way to avoid being overwhelmed by them was to sever my connection to all of my feelings, which meant I lost access to joy, humor, whimsy, and passion too.
You know, actually, I think this is what it is too. I had a terrible therapist for ~7 years that always tried to get me to avoid/mitigate uncomfortable emotions but I always felt it was making the issue worse. When I broke away from therapy in favor of things like meditation/philosophy, in some sessions, I felt ancient grief/pain bubbling up in ways that were overwhelming, but always felt way better afterwards. This isn't easy to do though and is taxing in itself. Some people need substances to do it, or hypnosis. I do think it's something to do with this though.
Thank you for starting this subthread, and writing clearly about this. I too find it resonates strongly with my situation.
> in some sessions, I felt ancient grief/pain bubbling up in ways that were overwhelming, but always felt way better afterwards.
For me, the major reason I might have excessively compartmentalized things[0] was that whenever I let myself feel the grief/pain/uncertainty - and early on, I was trying to process them instead of avoiding them - it would be overwhelming, excruciating, and never made anything better. After a year or two of what felt like inexhaustible supply of the same painful emotions, of nothing really changing or looking like it was about to, I finally took the opposite course, and ended up more-less where you and 'munificent are.
Took almost a decade to get to that point, and it's what you and others describe in this subthread. Some kind of emotional detachment. The emotions are there, but mostly weak, and most of the time I feel like I'm just observing them, and occasionally fighting them when they get too strong, too close to me. "Severed connection" seems like a very good analogy. I'm still afraid of revisiting the past, because I can't afford becoming non-functional for a year or two, like it happened the first time around. There's this part of me, that source of motivation, somewhere - but it feels like it's on life support, in a coma, waking up every other year for a few moments.
Meanwhile, when someone asks me what I like, or what I'd like to do, I draw a blank. It's not anhedonia, but something else - something that shuts down my brain whenever this question gets asked (or I ask it myself).
--
[0] - And developed what I feel is like instinctive fight-or-flight response around negative emotions: solve the problem or run away, but get rid of the emotion and do it NOW NOW NOW!
I'm about 4 years out from my no good, very bad 6 months. The similarities are a bit eerie. This happened while working a high stress product management job and I realized I was in the middle of burning out and had to do something about it.
Thankfully I had the resources to self-fund an extended sabbatical, and I left my job. In many ways this has been incredible and has helped immensely. But in many ways, it made the grief even more central in my life because I was no longer spending my days solving other people's problems.
Therapy has been immensely helpful, but I've struggled with integration. To this end, I'm about to experiment with psychedelic-assisted therapy. I've tried a lot of things up to this point, but I'm actually pretty optimistic about this. We'll see.
I'm now in this weird middle place where I recognize a growing need to do something useful and to work on big problems. But I'm also depressed and struggling to imagine returning back to what I was doing. I think the 2nd half of my career may be simpler and more focused.
I relate to this. I don't know what it is either, but over the course of my 25-year career it's become impossible to summon that "will" within me. My brain just constantly asks "and what are we doing this for again?" which is anathema to sustained effort. I wonder if it's simple age; maybe this is just the energy of youth that evaporated. Or maybe it's becoming jaded; seeing how people will encourage their employees to burn it hard, for a modest reward that (in my experience anyway) often does not even materialize.
Former founder now small-time entrepreneur and this resonates with me. I know what I’m capable of when I turn on the switch but I also know the sacrifices it entails. Not willing to go into that mode so someone else can profit in my behalf.
The energy of youth seems impossible to separate from the optimism. I suspect you could find enormous stamina in older folks for a goal that can rekindle their optimism.
It's not enough to have personal optimism you need a community/culture of optimists.
~10 years ago that was there in a big way for tech. It was peak YC prestige. HBO's Silicon Valley brought the start-up struggles/drama into the mainstream. Most people who worked hard were rewarded. Large in-person tech meetups provided a venue to share your success story.
The tech industry now feels bloated, mundane, low-value/rent-seeking, or as a net-negative for society. It isn't fun to share your success since it comes off as boasting instead of inspiring.
How I miss 2014. I was productive, optimistic, and energetic in a way I can barely comprehend now.
I agree entirely with this post. Considering that it is posted on HN which has very much promoted the startup hustle lifestyle for so long, this feels a bit like the buyer beware that comes 15 years after the fact. Something to consider for anyone who wants to give everything in exchange for 0.001% equity in a B2B blockchain fart app.
This is a good point other commenters have alluded to, and funny enough, my very first job out of school taught me this lesson - I was hired by a professor in my 2nd to last quarter, in a startup <10 people that was mostly his PHD students. It felt exciting, and this was like, peak startup era - we didn't have a bad product, just a bad/nonexistent way of monetizing. I had some equity but not enough to be working/stressing as hard as I was with how it played out.
Of course, it fell apart in the most obnoxious way possible. We assumed we'd be receiving a series B, that didnt appear, and then tried to monetize aggressively at the last second, got some buyout offers that would have been life-changing money for me at that time, that for whatever reason the founders/board would not accept, boom, no paycheck 6 months later followed by a few months of being shopped around for no pay, basically held hostage, then collapse.
I am kind of glad it happened, I laugh at equity offers or "bonuses" now from startups. The one piece of equity that has cashed on me in my career so far was in the very very low 5 figures. Lol. Less than a cost of living adjustment when averaged over the course of that employment.
You have to figure out when do to that 110% or more.
Not only for whether it's ever worthwhile in your role and how you benefit, but also for pacing.
For example, if you're a startup cofounder, in a good team, and you win big if the startup wins big, then you might put in that 110% frequently -- but you save your superhuman 200% bursts for emergencies, so that you can reliably put in close to 100% every day, not start making fatigued huge mess-ups.
For another example, if you're a series B startup hire, being paid below-market, with 0.01% stock options that will never be worth exercising, and the founding team turns out to be bad at everything except raising ZIRP money and beer-pong-- then you should still do right by your good teammates, and also be professional in general, but don't spend years burning yourself out at 110% while watching the dysfunctional company just urinate away everyone's contributions. Spend that extra 10% energy of yours in searching for a better situation.
I have actually done something like the situation that the earlier commenter described, and would still go back and give this advice to myself of back then.
I could add more examples that touch on these extreme situations, but I was trying to give examples familiar to most of HN.
I believe this is simply the aging process. We all want to peg it to something specific we've done, but I've never met a person who doesn't feel this way at some point in the middle of their lives. Our bodies are just like every other living thing in that they get less and less efficient after the initial bloom.
Then why does the dwindling inner reserve seem to line up so neatly to completed objectives? E.g. you successfully emerge from the dark period, but are unwilling or unmotivated to grind through another. The end of a struggle is not usually conveniently timed to match your age.
I agree, although I don't know that it's specifically a chronological function. I'm starting to think of aging as just an accumulation of abuse and trauma. Maybe that's physiological - sun exposure, broken bones that didn't heal quite right, whatever. But it's also mental. The parent comment is a great example, but there are basically an unending number of them. Loss of family or friends. Financial struggles. Mental illness. It all just adds up.
Thanks for sharing this. “Keep burning the candle at 110% … It takes something from you that you aren’t going to get back.” That’s something I’ve been feeling but haven’t been able to articulate after a prolonged sprint. It’s not quite burnout because it doesn’t erase your capability right away, but it takes a compounding toll.
Neither does burnout - despite the name it's not like a lightbulb burning out after which it's impossible for it to produce more light. It's an emotional thing where you don't want to any more.
> I am not the same person I was before that endeavor, and don't feel I really ever "healed" from it. It's very difficult to describe.
Ironically this describes it perfectly in a way that no single word can. It's somehow more than burnout, it's an actual alteration. I've tried to come up with a psychological explanation. It's something like the brain recognizing a very large pattern, or more specifically a dead end. The mind consists of feedback loops that must tie back to rewards. Modern work is so abstract from the rewards, computer programming even more so. I think we grow up developing our psyche like some list of rules we cobble together over time, but it's not a unified theory. Eventually the brain realizes it's working harder and harder with no tangible payout, the contradictions in the rules accumulate tension. Life somehow tricks you into spinning your wheels at full speed, nothings really happening, you're not sure how you got there, and you don't really have an exit plan. Then it all comes crashing down.
Maybe the stakes is just lower now? But anyway, yeah I can relate. It's like the mind has renewable and unrenewable 'stores'. The unrenewable ones are just buildups of life experiences that you can transmute into work in a certain way. But once you harness it, it's done. Probably.
This really resonated with me. I taught myself programming while working full time minimal wage job, I spent a year or two learning then an additional 2 years job hunting. Then I got a job and kept grinding, working like crazy for 3 years.
But with our current market, I've been out of work for a year.
I need to keep fighting harder than ever, but I don't know if I have the strength anymore. I feel like I've lost something, I don't know if it comes back
I'm fairly exhausted today, but I've shared on HN before that I absolutely feel this. I was in the military in a high stress role (about 20 years in), nursing an autistic child through chemotherapy, and still being a parent to my other child and supporting my wife.
Notwithstanding the other intense stress I went through in that career, I feel that I used something up making it through that. If you want more of the story feel free to look through my comments; I've talked about it in more depth a few times.
I was also finishing a CS degree (at WGU), and had a very stressful job. I started having chest and stomach pains, then I got shingles, then I was diagnosed with celiac disease, all in a very short time.
I quit the job, finished my degree, and still struggle with the chest pains and celiac disease.
So I feel this. I pushed through the stress for a time, and it took something from me--goodbye delicious gluten.
That mentor was very, very wise. I've had the same thing happen to me twice now. It happens outside the realm of career as well. For me it was a baby in the NICU and the rest of my life still needing serious attention as well. Something changes in your brain maybe. It's sad because while often 'stamina' will gain you things, this feels like a loss without a gain.
Baby in NICU has as the best case outcome that you go home with a baby. So you get to recover by ... having a new baby at home. We were tired for maybe seven years.
I feel this. A year of horrors such as surgery before their due date and constant re-admissions even though they haven’t been an inpatient for a year now I still mourn the person I was before.
This is the curse of counterfactuals you can't answer.
I was pretty directionless in my younger years, but reasonably smart and driven. I was in the Army and in my late 20s and decided to get into software and went back to school full-time while still serving in the Army. Possibly somewhat predictably, I also went through a divorce at the same time. But I was awake at 3 AM or so every single day, studying for several hours, going to work, studying at lunch, coming home, studying some more, on and on for a few years, and that was all I did. It was work of some sort, nonstop, with no other concerns.
It "worked." I got through the program, re-skilled, left the Army, at this point have quadrupled any salary I ever earned before getting into software.
But beyond that basic brutality of the experience of being mentally on at all waking hours on all days, and those waking hours often being well beyond 16, I ended up going through severe spinal degeneration in my mid 30s, obviously exacerbated if not outright caused by sitting too much, that ended in three surgeries in the span of 16 months, several years of intermittent disability and forced bed rest, cerebrospinal fluid leakage, an inability to walk without assistance for a while.
I ultimately got through it and seem to be basically okay in my mid 40s. Was it worth it, though? I have no idea. I'll certainly never do anything like that ever again. Physical health has become and will remain for the rest of my life my number one priority. I might deprioritize eating properly, sleeping enough, and consistently working out for a few weeks or even months here and there, but for years at a time? Never again. It's not just the severity of the experience itself. I'm not even sure the experience itself is all that bad. You get so high on the feeling of productivity and accomplishment that the difficulty of what you're doing barely even registers, and time flies when you're occupied nonstop. But I have no way of ever knowing how much it contributed to effectively losing half a decade of my life to a level of physical disability that doesn't normally happen to a person before they turn 70, during what was supposed to be the prime of my life.
It's possibly the reason I don't have kids. My wife at the time left me and by the time I remarried, I was in such bad shape that I couldn't even pick up my cats, didn't feel capable of raising a child when I couldn't even consistently get out of bed, and decided a vasectomy was a better option at that point. Again, I have no way of ever knowing if this would have happened anyway, but assuming the answer is even maybe no, was it worth to give up the chance of having kids to burn a little bit more brightly when I was 28? Fuck no, that isn't worth it.
I have asked myself this question a lot over the last few years - I don't know. I always want to say no, I wouldn't have done it. But, likely, the stress/instability of living with such a low wage would have caused irrecoverable circumstances at some point, so I guess whatever state I exist in now is probably better than the version of me that would exist had I not pursued my degree.
I am the first generation from my dad's side, who descended from slaves, to get a college degree (or really HS degree if we only include my paternal lineage). So it was a big deal. For me though, my career hasn't been the blazing success I'd expected it to have been, and I didn't end up doing remotely what I thought I would do. I 10x'd my income from college within 5 years, which felt like a big deal, til inflation blew the crap out of that, my meager savings were all but obliterated due to a series of bad financial moves/timing, and I am starting to hit a ceiling where 2xing my salary in a few years is no longer a reasonable expectation. So, I feel stagnant and unsatisfied, and I guess in my worst moments I'd prefer to have never gone through it. My life's materially better, I'm not at risk of starving anymore, and I got some health problems fixed. yet, some of the best people I met while in college I tossed aside because there simply was no time for them + what I was trying to do, very honestly - so I am very alone now, and tossed aside things like settling down in favor of getting ahead, which was another thing I had to kind of give up for a while.
But, I suspect, deep down, I would have done it anyway, or I wouldn't have ended up here. I didn't want to do it then either but I did, for whatever reason.
Thank you for your honesty. What you said about tossing people aside for lack of time resonates with my experience in and after college.
Recently I reconnected with someone who was a close friend early in college, before I switched to "I don't have time to hang out" mode. It turns out my friend also recently started slowing down after a hectic early career, and was open to reconnecting. It's not the same as back then—for one thing, we live in different states and can only occasionally visit each other in person. But still, it feels like something in me is patched up, even if not perfectly whole, which the busy years had torn apart. (Therapy has also helped a lot.)
I don't want to assume anything about your situation, but if there is anyone from college that you did have a meaningful connection with back then, and if you're willing to risk the disappointment of finding that they are now too busy / not interested, you could try getting in touch with them to catch up. It could be that they too are done with their hectic years and looking to connect with people more. Maybe you've already tried this, but I'm mentioning it in case you haven't.
I wish I had realized this when I was younger. People overestimate raw intelligence and underestimate sheer persistence. Just staying with a problem longer—pushing past the point where most would quit—feels almost like magic. Time + focus can take you incredibly far.
Stubbornness might just be the most valuable trait a scientist can have.
No, stubbornness plus being right are the most valuable trait a scientist can have. A whole lot of scientists were stubbornly wrong and are justifiably forgotten.
Stephen J. Gould wrote many of his Natural History magazine essays on these sorts of scientists. The most notable example would probably be Louis Agassiz, who was enormously famous in their own time, but held out stubbornly against evolution, and most of these stubborn scientists today are mere footnotes if they are remembered at all. (Agassiz also was a huge player in scientific racism- his special flavor of the idea was that Black and White people- as Americans defined them- were separate species created separately by God. Again he held onto this idea long after it had gone out of vogue with the rest of the scientific community.) He was the head of Comparative Zoology at Harvard, was hugely prominent in his time, and his stubbornness in defense of wrong ideas is why he had his name removed from the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology and elsewhere.
The stubborn correct few may become famous, but they also had to be stubborn first.
And those who defied something we know to be true now may have also done great work elsewhere before they made that mistake, and that stubbornness served them.
I dislike looking at those who win the fame lottery and trying to say they were never wrong and their opponents were never right. They just got one really big thing really right and stuck with it.
Raw intelligence is just another tool in the toolbox. Sure, it gives advantage if used right, or massive disadvantage (often paired with ocd-ish behavior, general unhappiness since one sees more what a clown show real world often is and who often gets success).
Not ashamed to say - I am not anyhow special re intelligence compared to my most of my uni peers, I struggled with memory too, a lot of endless rota. I was lets say above average on high school and thats it, facing same memory & non-stellar intelligence issues. So I learned to work longer on stuff, learning, everything, not giving up quickly, simply more patience. Saw this already on uni - bright folks were so unused to putting in effort from high school (which they coursed through effortlessly), they hit literal wall on uni.
At the end, I left most of those peers behind professionally, financially and life fulfillment wise, some non-easy choices with long term consequences. A lot of folks jump to their comfort zones way too early and eagerly. I've had some luck too but luck is just wasted chances if not prepared to seize them and take some risks.
When one hits those few crucial moments in life when big-consequence choices are done (which uni, which job, who to marry, where to settle etc), stamina can mean choosing more intense path with rewards in future, instead of going for the easy and a bit safer path from step #1.
Which comes from "The Procrastination Equation" by Piers Steel, an academic focused on motivation. I haven't finished the book since it's pretty self help-y, but I do like the equation. Here, expectancy is perceived likelihood of finishing the task, value is obvious, delay is how long until the payoff, and importantly, impulsiveness is the general impulsiveness of the task doer.
Makes sense how it depends on both the task and the person. I wonder if there is any way to change impulsiveness or if it's some sort of genetic trait. There are probably both learned and genetic factors.
It's certainly both. The genetic component is clearest to me when I see kids grow up in the same household and have differing levels of patience and impulse control from a young age. Then, people tend to become less impulsive as they age through both biological and deliberate means.
The degree to which impulsiveness can be directly reduced is an interesting question. I think a big part of the human condition is a frustration with one's impulsivity, and I suspect that that's driving the surge in adult ADHD diagnoses in some countries.
BJ Fogg's book Tiny Habits is great, particularly about the important of motivation vs ability in starting new routines. His main point is that ability relative to the task is much more important than motivation, because motivation is volatile. That is, it's much more likely that your ability to do something will remain stable long term than your motivation to do something. So if you choose really easy things to do to start a new habit (drink a glass of water in the morning), your motivation won't matter much, and the habit will stick.
So I think Piers is skating over that very important part of the equation.
Another piece of it is, if you manage to get healthy somehow, sleep better etc, then your motivation changes; the base level is reset. You have more energy to spare which you can devote to goals.
But I think there is a simpler way to think about motivation, which comes down to the ratio of effort to reward. The smaller the effort-reward ratio of a given activity, the more likely one is to do it. That single idea seems to rule my own behavior and that of many people I see. But it's also something you can hack, partly by using Fogg's idea of starting small. To change a behavior (and ultimately, your life), you just need to find a small enough starting activity to trigger action. It's not about motivation at all, and all the "motivational speakers" out there are misleading people in some fundamental way about the path to change.
One of the traps in that dynamic is that as we decrease the magnitude of the activity (drink a glass of water as oppposed to "go to the gym once a week to get stacked"), our motivation decreases as it loses its grandiose visions of change. I don't think task size and motivation necessarily decrease at the same rate tho. And I do think that grandiose visions are sometimes a form of self-sabotage or psychological homeostasis; ie "i'm only motivated to do things that i can't follow through on."
I don't find I effectively build small habits. I tried doing 10 pushups a day and failed, but then I started going to the gym and that full-on, hours of effort keeps me motivated and wanting to go. I'm not great at half-assing two things, I certainly can't 100th-ass 100 things ;)
Reminds me of what Steve Jobs said: "Focus is about saying no". That resonates with me in that very often when I'm doing a task I was passionate on and now I'm not so passionate on it because there are 100 other things Id rather be doing. To have the stamina to persist by saying no to the other things is what gives people a huge advantage. "No, I won't stop running" or "No, I won't switch projects cause this shiny object is more interesting". I think having the stamina to keep persisting is a huge advantage, but it often comes at you saying no to all the other things you'd also like to do.
I'm pretty good at filtering out distractions that come to me as they're assumed to be a distraction unless I see otherwise. I have more trouble filtering out ideas that I have myself as I often feel they could be relevant even though they haven't passed similar vetting. What resonated with me was Warren Buffet's "Two List Strategy" aka 5/25 rule.
I used to work at a big-tech branch in an Asian country where the academic talent was more concentrated relative to here in the bay area (due to the lack of local competition). What I noticed was that all of these academic elites from wealthy family had the stamina. They worked longer, they focused better, etc. I'm not sure they were aware of that but it was definitely noticeable.
Since then I have become skeptical about grit or hard work as an equalization factor: You sure need it but they have a lot of it.
I remember I used to complain in graduate school about the insane amount of work I had taking four engineering courses every quarter.
Then I learned that my cousin in Asia studies more than 12 hours a day. Goes to sleep at 11PM and wakes up at 6AM to study. She is in high school and her life is literally study, eat, sleep, repeat until the college entrance exams. High schoolers in the US are incredibly stressed about SAT and college application prep too, but its much worse in Asia where your entire life trajectory depends on a single set of exams that optimizes for maximal studiousness and pure g factor.
But I think stamina is something you can build over time. I also think it is a function of how interested one is in the work. I can work forever on some tasks, but some others are like chewing glass and I tap out in less than an hour.
in china this is called "eating bitterness", the idea of enduring hardship, overcoming difficulties, and forging ahead. it is not just academics, but everyone. it's chinese culture essentially.
Regarding stamina defined broadly as it is in this article: One of my favorite quotes comes from an unlikely source: Mike Tyson.
"I don't care how good you are at anything. You don't have discipline you ain’t nothin. Discipline is doing what you hate but doing it like you love it"
> It’s contributing as part of a team that, let’s say, has posed a challenging experience for all involved. It’s returning for another go at a problem that has repeatedly turned your mind into oatmeal ... It’s the ability to chip away at goals despite a lack of visible progress.
To bring in some LinkedIn-level grandstanding here: I deeply agree, especially with this part of the quote, when it comes to leveling up my career in software. The problems get more and more abstract and muddied and the difference between engineer levels sometimes comes down to who gives up and who doesn't.
This reminds me of one of my favorite quotes I try to live by..
"Tenacity is a most underrated quality in life. We all speak about talent, intelligence, glamour. But tenacity is the common thing for every successful person in life. Maintain that motivation to go from A to B and to keep your focus on that target without any weakening. That is called tenacity; stamina in your motivation."
- Arsene Wenger (Legendary Arsenal FC Coach)
I think the “of course” (involuntarily) assumes that you have to choose a good goal, which, looking at the world, is by no means a given.
Many people show tenacity, persistence, and even obsession, but they choose wrong or mediocre goals, at least if we consider traditional “success” as a "good target".
And I'm not referring to people who spend hours and hours scrolling through social media, showing tenacity, persistence, and unusual resistance to boredom, but to those who spend enormous energy, effort, and time trying to get a minor job promotion that would earn them an extra 10K a year, along with the satisfaction of having given their work arch-nemesis a hard time, instead of using the same energy, effort, and time to earn 100K more a year elsewhere.
I see tenacity and stamina in people who every day look for the best, the most “optimal” diet that will allow them to finally reach the best shape of their lives, instead of using the same stamina to resist a little hunger when they choose and follow the most effective way to lose weight, which is to eat less.
If I look back on my life, one of my biggest regrets is not having chosen better and bigger goals for my efforts: I spent a lot of time and energy trying to make relationships work, instead of using the same time and energy to find someone more compatible with me; I spent energy, time and willpower to get excellent grades in school, without thinking too much about whether those excellent grades would lead me to the professional career I aspired to; I spent years working tirelessly toward the dream of an academic career, before realizing that I did not want to work with students that much, my research was not that groundbreaking, and I wanted to earn much more money than what an academic career could offer.
Aquinas addresses the virtue of perseverance and the vices opposed to perseverance in Q.137[0] and Q.138[1] of the Summa, respectively. A virtue here is "a habit that directs us to do something well, or to omit something". Perseverance allows us to avoid forsaking "a good on account of long endurance of difficulties and toils".
As a virtue, it holds the mean between the errors that flank it on either side, avoiding effeminacy and delicacy on the one hand, and pertinacity on the other.
Effeminacy "withdraws from good on account of sorrow caused by lack of pleasure, yielding as it were to a weak motion", while delicacy "is a kind of effeminacy", but while effeminacy "regards lack of pleasures [...] delicacy regards the cause that hinders pleasure, for instance toil". In other words, effeminacy shrinks from things, because of the lack of pleasure, while delicacy shrinks on account of the discomfort caused.
Pertinacity holds on "impudently, as being utterly tenacious". It resists course correction.
Modern readers seem to misinterpret writings by virtue ethicists as self help, perhaps because much of modern "philosophical" discourse is just disguised therapy books.
These are descriptive, not prescriptive, when Aquinas says what perseverence means he doesn't tell you what to do to be virtuous, but what the virtue in itself is.
Although there are some prescriptions in the Summa (see Ia IIae Q38 as a prime example), Aquinas mostly left the study of the building of virtue to other writers, as it is a secondary matter.
Yes, as the aim is scientific (in the classical sense of the term), but he would be the first to reject the fact/value dichotomy. Meaning, the understanding of the good is understanding what is desirable.
There is a different way to think about it which is that the work could in principle be better structured to automatically be associated with more pleasure.
Stamina without Persistence is rather useless. Applying persistence constructively is the major differentiator in my view. The notion that a majority of humans reach a level of effort, in daily life or their pursuits, where stamina becomes a factor is likely single digit percentage of the population, say in the US. Stamina maintaining an addiction or survival as a homeless person is not the same as multi-hour Twitch streaming, so to speak.
Stamina is often fueled by stimulant drugs which exert a toll on the user. I used five unique ones this morning, and I know it's going to be tough to get proper sleep. As long as one uses their time well, there is no substitute for work-life balance.
I would argue the original post is talking about stamina on a different scale. Stamina over years. Not over the course of a day or week, fueled by stimulants.
An activity or thing that holds deep meaning to you personally will be the stimulant to one's stamina. Love for your child will allow you to take care of him/her despite being insanely sleep deprived. I think the concept is much more broader than just work.
That isn't stamina, but perhaps a corrective for the lack of stamina. The stimulation is meant to increase pleasure, hence making it easier to stick with something. Stamina means the ability to endure the lack of pleasure in pursuit of the good.
That sounds like a false dichotomy as it's suggesting that pleasure may not coexist with the good. Typically they do coexist. Typically it is pursuit of the good that brings innate pleasure. If there is insufficient pleasure from work, it's typically because it's insufficiently good. The chemicals are an attempt to fill the gap.
> That sounds like a false dichotomy as it's suggesting that pleasure may not coexist with the good.
I didn't say they couldn't. But they don't always, for one reason or another. We're flawed, we have bad habits, we have vices, we have disordered tastes, etc. These can steer us away from the good toward destructive ends, even though they may provide us with a cheap and empty source of fleeting pleasure.
> If there is insufficient pleasure from work, it's typically because it's insufficiently good.
Continuing the thought above, there are plenty of things we know that are good for us that we nonetheless don't want to do. We struggle to do them, but this does not mean they are insufficiently good, not in the least! It means we are not sufficiently good. Perseverance (or stamina, to use the author's terminology) means enduring unpleasantness, even suffering, for the sake of the good. The more perfect a human being is, however, the more pleasure is aligned with the good, because a more perfect human being is better aligned with the good. Indeed, in a perfect human being, if the situation demanded it, suffering and dying for a worthy good would be a pleasure.
What is experienced as pleasure is not fixed and determined only by the object, but also conditioned by the subject. The reason is similar to the difference between good and bad taste. Good taste is an alignment with and receptivity to the objective good, while bad taste is rooted in dullness, or a disorder of receptivity, or whatever.
A former mentor gave me some valuable advice once about this that didn't make sense til years later. Basically, I got a computer science degree while working full time minimum wage - in a very competitive program and high cost of living area. It was extraordinarily hard, orders of magnitude harder than anything else I've ever done, just trying to survive and not starve and somehow find the time to do well in my studies.
He said something like "if you keep burning the candle at 110% like you have been for long, you'll find that you often can find something deep within you to keep going, but eventually, this can run dry, and it doesn't really regenerate. It takes something from you that you aren't going to get back."
I don't mean minor stuff like, "oh I'm really tired today and I don't want to go to school." I'm talking like, very difficult coursework + stressful job + major life calamities and personal loss all compiling at the same time in a way that you just want to crawl into a pit and die, yet, you keep going - that kind of willpower/stamina whatever you want to call it.
He was right. I think he was alluding somewhat to burnout, which I think is related but somehow different - I am not the same person I was before that endeavor, and don't feel I really ever "healed" from it. It's very difficult to describe. feels a little like anhedonia, like a part of me has been missing since then. When I get in similar circumstances now, I find it harder to summon whatever it was inside of me that "kept going."
I expect I'm still healing because I'm only ~10 years removed from this, but, sometimes I'm not sure.
I feel this.
About seven years ago, I was working full-time at an amazing but consuming job, raising a family, and surviving the pandemic. I was also writing every single day on a large textbook. Then within the span of about six months, my dog got sick and died, my mom got cancer, and a few friends and family members died unexpectedly. I kept writing every day while dealing with all of that. I literally wrote in the waiting room while my mom was getting CT scanned. I kept working on the book as the pandemic reared its head and politics went insane.
I got through it all and finished the book, but I haven't felt the same since. It's like some nerve in my soul got burned to a cinder and is no longer able to fire.
I've spent a lot of time in therapy which has been amazing, but I'm still not what I'd call all better.
My hypothesis is that I spent so much time compartmentalizing emotions like anxiety, grief, sorrow, and hurt in order to keep moving forward that I got too good at stuffing them in a box. The only way to avoid being overwhelmed by them was to sever my connection to all of my feelings, which meant I lost access to joy, humor, whimsy, and passion too.
I'm working to rebuild that connection, but it doesn't come back easily.
I’m not sure I can connect to any particular moment or chain of events (that will probably take some soul searching) to point to as a cause, but I’ve become conscious of a reduced (though not entirely severed) connection to my emotions in recent years. There are times where feelings will come through with strength similar to how they used to, but much of the time sensations are dulled. This has naturally had negative effects on my ability to make choices purely based on personal pleasure, too, which can be a problem when e.g. I’m spending an evening out with a friend and they ask what I’d like to do — sometimes answering is difficult because even if I have a preference, it’s not surfacing itself which makes it seem that the decision makes no difference.
Something that helped was re-connecting with the past version of myself by going through some truly ancient computer backups. To some extent it put me back into my prior mindset, and so now at least I’m doing things explicitly because I want to and find doing them enjoyable.
I can only theorize on what might finish returning me back to how I used to be, but I think probably the most beneficial thing would be a hard break from most of my responsibilities for an extended period of time which I can then dedicate to myself, probably somewhere between 6 months and 2+ years. That’s not exactly practical though because I have a mortgage and bills to pay.
> This has naturally had negative effects on my ability to make choices purely based on personal pleasure, too, which can be a problem
I've been rehabbing from a severely broken ankle the past nine months and in physical therapy the other day, my therapist said, "You'll be in a better headspace if we come up with a concrete goal to work towards. What's something you'd like to be able to do with your body that we can work towards that would be fun?"
And I just, like, stared ahead blankly for a while without having an answer.
> Something that helped was re-connecting with the past version of myself by going through some truly ancient computer backups.
That's a good idea. I do feel like part of my internal disconnection also has to do with being disconnected from my past self as well. It's like I sort of forgot who I am.
Wow, we are living a lot of the same life story. That feeling where I imagine would it would feel like to have something enjoyable to look forward to, but I'm not. Hoping that I will somehow come to terms with my grief for a death of someone close to me. I keep kind of grinding it out in my tech jobs, maybe not as bad as yours. After that death, after covid, the world just wasn't fun anymore. I have talked to a therapist about it, but didn't get anyway. What I wish I had was a new mission in life. I was so excited to go to grad school, loved my first job. My family is fine. They need more of me probably.
And this is my anonymous online diary.
> That feeling where I imagine would it would feel like to have something enjoyable to look forward to, but I'm not.
Oof, yeah, I know that feeling.
> I have talked to a therapist about it, but didn't get anyway.
My understanding is that variance in therapists is very high. Given that it's one of the most intimate relationships you can have, it really requires finding the right one that fits your specific needs. It may be worth trying to find another.
> Something that helped was re-connecting with the past version of myself by going through some truly ancient computer backups. To some extent it put me back into my prior mindset, and so now at least I’m doing things explicitly because I want to and find doing them enjoyable.
Heh, this is so poignant for me, but for me, it's going back and reading old journals/writings - I write a lot, so much that most people don't want to read it all, so a lot of it when I was younger went into journals. One entry in particular was after I had just lost my father, in front of my eyes, in kind of a violent/traumatic way - I was in my early early 20's and had no idea what I had been experiencing was some kind of PTSD, but knew enough to know something weird was happening to me, so I wrote everything down in a little journal by hand.
Recently, in a fit of frustration, I picked it up (this is now 15 or so years ago) and I found an entry I had forgotten about - a wildly delusional (at that time, if you had known me, you would have considered it delusional) passage where I aspired to lift myself out of my situation and said I wanted to study CS, or as I put it that time, "something with computers," and even named my dream university I ended up transferring to in the end. This was many years before any of it ended up becoming reality, and I became proud of my past self, and I felt that connection a little bit of what you are describing. Until I read that I had no idea that where I ended up was exactly where I intended, I had lost sight of that.
> My hypothesis is that I spent so much time compartmentalizing emotions like anxiety, grief, sorrow, and hurt in order to keep moving forward that I got too good at stuffing them in a box. The only way to avoid being overwhelmed by them was to sever my connection to all of my feelings, which meant I lost access to joy, humor, whimsy, and passion too.
You know, actually, I think this is what it is too. I had a terrible therapist for ~7 years that always tried to get me to avoid/mitigate uncomfortable emotions but I always felt it was making the issue worse. When I broke away from therapy in favor of things like meditation/philosophy, in some sessions, I felt ancient grief/pain bubbling up in ways that were overwhelming, but always felt way better afterwards. This isn't easy to do though and is taxing in itself. Some people need substances to do it, or hypnosis. I do think it's something to do with this though.
Thank you for starting this subthread, and writing clearly about this. I too find it resonates strongly with my situation.
> in some sessions, I felt ancient grief/pain bubbling up in ways that were overwhelming, but always felt way better afterwards.
For me, the major reason I might have excessively compartmentalized things[0] was that whenever I let myself feel the grief/pain/uncertainty - and early on, I was trying to process them instead of avoiding them - it would be overwhelming, excruciating, and never made anything better. After a year or two of what felt like inexhaustible supply of the same painful emotions, of nothing really changing or looking like it was about to, I finally took the opposite course, and ended up more-less where you and 'munificent are.
Took almost a decade to get to that point, and it's what you and others describe in this subthread. Some kind of emotional detachment. The emotions are there, but mostly weak, and most of the time I feel like I'm just observing them, and occasionally fighting them when they get too strong, too close to me. "Severed connection" seems like a very good analogy. I'm still afraid of revisiting the past, because I can't afford becoming non-functional for a year or two, like it happened the first time around. There's this part of me, that source of motivation, somewhere - but it feels like it's on life support, in a coma, waking up every other year for a few moments.
Meanwhile, when someone asks me what I like, or what I'd like to do, I draw a blank. It's not anhedonia, but something else - something that shuts down my brain whenever this question gets asked (or I ask it myself).
--
[0] - And developed what I feel is like instinctive fight-or-flight response around negative emotions: solve the problem or run away, but get rid of the emotion and do it NOW NOW NOW!
I'm about 4 years out from my no good, very bad 6 months. The similarities are a bit eerie. This happened while working a high stress product management job and I realized I was in the middle of burning out and had to do something about it.
Thankfully I had the resources to self-fund an extended sabbatical, and I left my job. In many ways this has been incredible and has helped immensely. But in many ways, it made the grief even more central in my life because I was no longer spending my days solving other people's problems.
Therapy has been immensely helpful, but I've struggled with integration. To this end, I'm about to experiment with psychedelic-assisted therapy. I've tried a lot of things up to this point, but I'm actually pretty optimistic about this. We'll see.
I'm now in this weird middle place where I recognize a growing need to do something useful and to work on big problems. But I'm also depressed and struggling to imagine returning back to what I was doing. I think the 2nd half of my career may be simpler and more focused.
I relate to this. I don't know what it is either, but over the course of my 25-year career it's become impossible to summon that "will" within me. My brain just constantly asks "and what are we doing this for again?" which is anathema to sustained effort. I wonder if it's simple age; maybe this is just the energy of youth that evaporated. Or maybe it's becoming jaded; seeing how people will encourage their employees to burn it hard, for a modest reward that (in my experience anyway) often does not even materialize.
Former founder now small-time entrepreneur and this resonates with me. I know what I’m capable of when I turn on the switch but I also know the sacrifices it entails. Not willing to go into that mode so someone else can profit in my behalf.
The energy of youth seems impossible to separate from the optimism. I suspect you could find enormous stamina in older folks for a goal that can rekindle their optimism.
It's not enough to have personal optimism you need a community/culture of optimists.
~10 years ago that was there in a big way for tech. It was peak YC prestige. HBO's Silicon Valley brought the start-up struggles/drama into the mainstream. Most people who worked hard were rewarded. Large in-person tech meetups provided a venue to share your success story.
The tech industry now feels bloated, mundane, low-value/rent-seeking, or as a net-negative for society. It isn't fun to share your success since it comes off as boasting instead of inspiring.
How I miss 2014. I was productive, optimistic, and energetic in a way I can barely comprehend now.
I agree entirely with this post. Considering that it is posted on HN which has very much promoted the startup hustle lifestyle for so long, this feels a bit like the buyer beware that comes 15 years after the fact. Something to consider for anyone who wants to give everything in exchange for 0.001% equity in a B2B blockchain fart app.
This is a good point other commenters have alluded to, and funny enough, my very first job out of school taught me this lesson - I was hired by a professor in my 2nd to last quarter, in a startup <10 people that was mostly his PHD students. It felt exciting, and this was like, peak startup era - we didn't have a bad product, just a bad/nonexistent way of monetizing. I had some equity but not enough to be working/stressing as hard as I was with how it played out.
Of course, it fell apart in the most obnoxious way possible. We assumed we'd be receiving a series B, that didnt appear, and then tried to monetize aggressively at the last second, got some buyout offers that would have been life-changing money for me at that time, that for whatever reason the founders/board would not accept, boom, no paycheck 6 months later followed by a few months of being shopped around for no pay, basically held hostage, then collapse.
I am kind of glad it happened, I laugh at equity offers or "bonuses" now from startups. The one piece of equity that has cashed on me in my career so far was in the very very low 5 figures. Lol. Less than a cost of living adjustment when averaged over the course of that employment.
You have to figure out when do to that 110% or more.
Not only for whether it's ever worthwhile in your role and how you benefit, but also for pacing.
For example, if you're a startup cofounder, in a good team, and you win big if the startup wins big, then you might put in that 110% frequently -- but you save your superhuman 200% bursts for emergencies, so that you can reliably put in close to 100% every day, not start making fatigued huge mess-ups.
For another example, if you're a series B startup hire, being paid below-market, with 0.01% stock options that will never be worth exercising, and the founding team turns out to be bad at everything except raising ZIRP money and beer-pong-- then you should still do right by your good teammates, and also be professional in general, but don't spend years burning yourself out at 110% while watching the dysfunctional company just urinate away everyone's contributions. Spend that extra 10% energy of yours in searching for a better situation.
This is good advice in general, but feels like it’s missing the point of what it’s replying to.
Concretely, it assumes a lot of agency.
The words “major life calamities and personal loss”, were key words that really change the amount of agency it’s reasonable to assume.
I have actually done something like the situation that the earlier commenter described, and would still go back and give this advice to myself of back then.
I could add more examples that touch on these extreme situations, but I was trying to give examples familiar to most of HN.
Fair enough. Do you think you could have taken that advice then?
Even if taking it negatively impacted loved ones (in the short term at least)?
Personally, I just don’t know how to make that kind of decision well beyond a certain point.
I believe this is simply the aging process. We all want to peg it to something specific we've done, but I've never met a person who doesn't feel this way at some point in the middle of their lives. Our bodies are just like every other living thing in that they get less and less efficient after the initial bloom.
Then why does the dwindling inner reserve seem to line up so neatly to completed objectives? E.g. you successfully emerge from the dark period, but are unwilling or unmotivated to grind through another. The end of a struggle is not usually conveniently timed to match your age.
One explanation is the need to complete the objective compensating for age.
I agree, although I don't know that it's specifically a chronological function. I'm starting to think of aging as just an accumulation of abuse and trauma. Maybe that's physiological - sun exposure, broken bones that didn't heal quite right, whatever. But it's also mental. The parent comment is a great example, but there are basically an unending number of them. Loss of family or friends. Financial struggles. Mental illness. It all just adds up.
Thanks for sharing this. “Keep burning the candle at 110% … It takes something from you that you aren’t going to get back.” That’s something I’ve been feeling but haven’t been able to articulate after a prolonged sprint. It’s not quite burnout because it doesn’t erase your capability right away, but it takes a compounding toll.
Neither does burnout - despite the name it's not like a lightbulb burning out after which it's impossible for it to produce more light. It's an emotional thing where you don't want to any more.
> I am not the same person I was before that endeavor, and don't feel I really ever "healed" from it. It's very difficult to describe.
Ironically this describes it perfectly in a way that no single word can. It's somehow more than burnout, it's an actual alteration. I've tried to come up with a psychological explanation. It's something like the brain recognizing a very large pattern, or more specifically a dead end. The mind consists of feedback loops that must tie back to rewards. Modern work is so abstract from the rewards, computer programming even more so. I think we grow up developing our psyche like some list of rules we cobble together over time, but it's not a unified theory. Eventually the brain realizes it's working harder and harder with no tangible payout, the contradictions in the rules accumulate tension. Life somehow tricks you into spinning your wheels at full speed, nothings really happening, you're not sure how you got there, and you don't really have an exit plan. Then it all comes crashing down.
Maybe the stakes is just lower now? But anyway, yeah I can relate. It's like the mind has renewable and unrenewable 'stores'. The unrenewable ones are just buildups of life experiences that you can transmute into work in a certain way. But once you harness it, it's done. Probably.
This really resonated with me. I taught myself programming while working full time minimal wage job, I spent a year or two learning then an additional 2 years job hunting. Then I got a job and kept grinding, working like crazy for 3 years. But with our current market, I've been out of work for a year. I need to keep fighting harder than ever, but I don't know if I have the strength anymore. I feel like I've lost something, I don't know if it comes back
I'm fairly exhausted today, but I've shared on HN before that I absolutely feel this. I was in the military in a high stress role (about 20 years in), nursing an autistic child through chemotherapy, and still being a parent to my other child and supporting my wife.
Notwithstanding the other intense stress I went through in that career, I feel that I used something up making it through that. If you want more of the story feel free to look through my comments; I've talked about it in more depth a few times.
I was also finishing a CS degree (at WGU), and had a very stressful job. I started having chest and stomach pains, then I got shingles, then I was diagnosed with celiac disease, all in a very short time.
I quit the job, finished my degree, and still struggle with the chest pains and celiac disease.
So I feel this. I pushed through the stress for a time, and it took something from me--goodbye delicious gluten.
That mentor was very, very wise. I've had the same thing happen to me twice now. It happens outside the realm of career as well. For me it was a baby in the NICU and the rest of my life still needing serious attention as well. Something changes in your brain maybe. It's sad because while often 'stamina' will gain you things, this feels like a loss without a gain.
How did you recover?
Baby in NICU has as the best case outcome that you go home with a baby. So you get to recover by ... having a new baby at home. We were tired for maybe seven years.
I feel this. A year of horrors such as surgery before their due date and constant re-admissions even though they haven’t been an inpatient for a year now I still mourn the person I was before.
Have you tried something like an extended sabbatical?
I went through a similar period near the end of my studies and can relate to your current disposition.
This is the curse of counterfactuals you can't answer.
I was pretty directionless in my younger years, but reasonably smart and driven. I was in the Army and in my late 20s and decided to get into software and went back to school full-time while still serving in the Army. Possibly somewhat predictably, I also went through a divorce at the same time. But I was awake at 3 AM or so every single day, studying for several hours, going to work, studying at lunch, coming home, studying some more, on and on for a few years, and that was all I did. It was work of some sort, nonstop, with no other concerns.
It "worked." I got through the program, re-skilled, left the Army, at this point have quadrupled any salary I ever earned before getting into software.
But beyond that basic brutality of the experience of being mentally on at all waking hours on all days, and those waking hours often being well beyond 16, I ended up going through severe spinal degeneration in my mid 30s, obviously exacerbated if not outright caused by sitting too much, that ended in three surgeries in the span of 16 months, several years of intermittent disability and forced bed rest, cerebrospinal fluid leakage, an inability to walk without assistance for a while.
I ultimately got through it and seem to be basically okay in my mid 40s. Was it worth it, though? I have no idea. I'll certainly never do anything like that ever again. Physical health has become and will remain for the rest of my life my number one priority. I might deprioritize eating properly, sleeping enough, and consistently working out for a few weeks or even months here and there, but for years at a time? Never again. It's not just the severity of the experience itself. I'm not even sure the experience itself is all that bad. You get so high on the feeling of productivity and accomplishment that the difficulty of what you're doing barely even registers, and time flies when you're occupied nonstop. But I have no way of ever knowing how much it contributed to effectively losing half a decade of my life to a level of physical disability that doesn't normally happen to a person before they turn 70, during what was supposed to be the prime of my life.
It's possibly the reason I don't have kids. My wife at the time left me and by the time I remarried, I was in such bad shape that I couldn't even pick up my cats, didn't feel capable of raising a child when I couldn't even consistently get out of bed, and decided a vasectomy was a better option at that point. Again, I have no way of ever knowing if this would have happened anyway, but assuming the answer is even maybe no, was it worth to give up the chance of having kids to burn a little bit more brightly when I was 28? Fuck no, that isn't worth it.
Thank you for writing this. This is how I feel about 10.5 years into my PhD praying the job market comes through for me.
I mean, if it was worth it, you would do it again right, because the alternative is worse?
I have asked myself this question a lot over the last few years - I don't know. I always want to say no, I wouldn't have done it. But, likely, the stress/instability of living with such a low wage would have caused irrecoverable circumstances at some point, so I guess whatever state I exist in now is probably better than the version of me that would exist had I not pursued my degree.
I am the first generation from my dad's side, who descended from slaves, to get a college degree (or really HS degree if we only include my paternal lineage). So it was a big deal. For me though, my career hasn't been the blazing success I'd expected it to have been, and I didn't end up doing remotely what I thought I would do. I 10x'd my income from college within 5 years, which felt like a big deal, til inflation blew the crap out of that, my meager savings were all but obliterated due to a series of bad financial moves/timing, and I am starting to hit a ceiling where 2xing my salary in a few years is no longer a reasonable expectation. So, I feel stagnant and unsatisfied, and I guess in my worst moments I'd prefer to have never gone through it. My life's materially better, I'm not at risk of starving anymore, and I got some health problems fixed. yet, some of the best people I met while in college I tossed aside because there simply was no time for them + what I was trying to do, very honestly - so I am very alone now, and tossed aside things like settling down in favor of getting ahead, which was another thing I had to kind of give up for a while.
But, I suspect, deep down, I would have done it anyway, or I wouldn't have ended up here. I didn't want to do it then either but I did, for whatever reason.
Thank you for your honesty. What you said about tossing people aside for lack of time resonates with my experience in and after college.
Recently I reconnected with someone who was a close friend early in college, before I switched to "I don't have time to hang out" mode. It turns out my friend also recently started slowing down after a hectic early career, and was open to reconnecting. It's not the same as back then—for one thing, we live in different states and can only occasionally visit each other in person. But still, it feels like something in me is patched up, even if not perfectly whole, which the busy years had torn apart. (Therapy has also helped a lot.)
I don't want to assume anything about your situation, but if there is anyone from college that you did have a meaningful connection with back then, and if you're willing to risk the disappointment of finding that they are now too busy / not interested, you could try getting in touch with them to catch up. It could be that they too are done with their hectic years and looking to connect with people more. Maybe you've already tried this, but I'm mentioning it in case you haven't.
This is true.
Focus = Energy - Distraction
and
Success = Focus x Time
The way you gain stamina is by doing things to increase your energy and decrease distraction. I wrote and talked about this here, fwiw.
https://vonnik.substack.com/p/state-changes-work-and-presenc...
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/stokedlive_focus-is-power-lea...
I wish I had realized this when I was younger. People overestimate raw intelligence and underestimate sheer persistence. Just staying with a problem longer—pushing past the point where most would quit—feels almost like magic. Time + focus can take you incredibly far.
Stubbornness might just be the most valuable trait a scientist can have.
No, stubbornness plus being right are the most valuable trait a scientist can have. A whole lot of scientists were stubbornly wrong and are justifiably forgotten.
Stephen J. Gould wrote many of his Natural History magazine essays on these sorts of scientists. The most notable example would probably be Louis Agassiz, who was enormously famous in their own time, but held out stubbornly against evolution, and most of these stubborn scientists today are mere footnotes if they are remembered at all. (Agassiz also was a huge player in scientific racism- his special flavor of the idea was that Black and White people- as Americans defined them- were separate species created separately by God. Again he held onto this idea long after it had gone out of vogue with the rest of the scientific community.) He was the head of Comparative Zoology at Harvard, was hugely prominent in his time, and his stubbornness in defense of wrong ideas is why he had his name removed from the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology and elsewhere.
The stubborn correct few may become famous, but they also had to be stubborn first.
And those who defied something we know to be true now may have also done great work elsewhere before they made that mistake, and that stubbornness served them.
I dislike looking at those who win the fame lottery and trying to say they were never wrong and their opponents were never right. They just got one really big thing really right and stuck with it.
> his stubbornness in defense of wrong ideas is why he had his name removed from the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology and elsewhere.
It strikes me that nowadays that would result in outrage about "wokeness and cancel culture".
It can work both ways though, I've had projects that I kept going far beyond what was sensible.
Raw intelligence is just another tool in the toolbox. Sure, it gives advantage if used right, or massive disadvantage (often paired with ocd-ish behavior, general unhappiness since one sees more what a clown show real world often is and who often gets success).
Not ashamed to say - I am not anyhow special re intelligence compared to my most of my uni peers, I struggled with memory too, a lot of endless rota. I was lets say above average on high school and thats it, facing same memory & non-stellar intelligence issues. So I learned to work longer on stuff, learning, everything, not giving up quickly, simply more patience. Saw this already on uni - bright folks were so unused to putting in effort from high school (which they coursed through effortlessly), they hit literal wall on uni.
At the end, I left most of those peers behind professionally, financially and life fulfillment wise, some non-easy choices with long term consequences. A lot of folks jump to their comfort zones way too early and eagerly. I've had some luck too but luck is just wasted chances if not prepared to seize them and take some risks.
When one hits those few crucial moments in life when big-consequence choices are done (which uni, which job, who to marry, where to settle etc), stamina can mean choosing more intense path with rewards in future, instead of going for the easy and a bit safer path from step #1.
Somewhat related, I've seen a similar equation for motivation:
Motivation = (Expectancy * Value) / (Impulsiveness * Delay)Which comes from "The Procrastination Equation" by Piers Steel, an academic focused on motivation. I haven't finished the book since it's pretty self help-y, but I do like the equation. Here, expectancy is perceived likelihood of finishing the task, value is obvious, delay is how long until the payoff, and importantly, impulsiveness is the general impulsiveness of the task doer.
Makes sense how it depends on both the task and the person. I wonder if there is any way to change impulsiveness or if it's some sort of genetic trait. There are probably both learned and genetic factors.
It's certainly both. The genetic component is clearest to me when I see kids grow up in the same household and have differing levels of patience and impulse control from a young age. Then, people tend to become less impulsive as they age through both biological and deliberate means.
The degree to which impulsiveness can be directly reduced is an interesting question. I think a big part of the human condition is a frustration with one's impulsivity, and I suspect that that's driving the surge in adult ADHD diagnoses in some countries.
BJ Fogg's book Tiny Habits is great, particularly about the important of motivation vs ability in starting new routines. His main point is that ability relative to the task is much more important than motivation, because motivation is volatile. That is, it's much more likely that your ability to do something will remain stable long term than your motivation to do something. So if you choose really easy things to do to start a new habit (drink a glass of water in the morning), your motivation won't matter much, and the habit will stick.
https://www.amazon.com/Tiny-Habits-Changes-Change-Everything...
So I think Piers is skating over that very important part of the equation.
Another piece of it is, if you manage to get healthy somehow, sleep better etc, then your motivation changes; the base level is reset. You have more energy to spare which you can devote to goals.
But I think there is a simpler way to think about motivation, which comes down to the ratio of effort to reward. The smaller the effort-reward ratio of a given activity, the more likely one is to do it. That single idea seems to rule my own behavior and that of many people I see. But it's also something you can hack, partly by using Fogg's idea of starting small. To change a behavior (and ultimately, your life), you just need to find a small enough starting activity to trigger action. It's not about motivation at all, and all the "motivational speakers" out there are misleading people in some fundamental way about the path to change.
One of the traps in that dynamic is that as we decrease the magnitude of the activity (drink a glass of water as oppposed to "go to the gym once a week to get stacked"), our motivation decreases as it loses its grandiose visions of change. I don't think task size and motivation necessarily decrease at the same rate tho. And I do think that grandiose visions are sometimes a form of self-sabotage or psychological homeostasis; ie "i'm only motivated to do things that i can't follow through on."
I don't find I effectively build small habits. I tried doing 10 pushups a day and failed, but then I started going to the gym and that full-on, hours of effort keeps me motivated and wanting to go. I'm not great at half-assing two things, I certainly can't 100th-ass 100 things ;)
energy = distraction + success/time
profound
in a sense, yes, because distraction and "success" are just different types of work. you're burning neurons either way.
the important thing is to latch onto the the independent variables, the knobs you can turn.
> Success = Focus x Time
You're forgetting a term on the RHS: Luck.
Most people are either certain that it dominates, or certain that it's negligible.
very true. this is just about controllable inputs tho.
Reminds me of what Steve Jobs said: "Focus is about saying no". That resonates with me in that very often when I'm doing a task I was passionate on and now I'm not so passionate on it because there are 100 other things Id rather be doing. To have the stamina to persist by saying no to the other things is what gives people a huge advantage. "No, I won't stop running" or "No, I won't switch projects cause this shiny object is more interesting". I think having the stamina to keep persisting is a huge advantage, but it often comes at you saying no to all the other things you'd also like to do.
I'm pretty good at filtering out distractions that come to me as they're assumed to be a distraction unless I see otherwise. I have more trouble filtering out ideas that I have myself as I often feel they could be relevant even though they haven't passed similar vetting. What resonated with me was Warren Buffet's "Two List Strategy" aka 5/25 rule.
I used to work at a big-tech branch in an Asian country where the academic talent was more concentrated relative to here in the bay area (due to the lack of local competition). What I noticed was that all of these academic elites from wealthy family had the stamina. They worked longer, they focused better, etc. I'm not sure they were aware of that but it was definitely noticeable.
Since then I have become skeptical about grit or hard work as an equalization factor: You sure need it but they have a lot of it.
I remember I used to complain in graduate school about the insane amount of work I had taking four engineering courses every quarter.
Then I learned that my cousin in Asia studies more than 12 hours a day. Goes to sleep at 11PM and wakes up at 6AM to study. She is in high school and her life is literally study, eat, sleep, repeat until the college entrance exams. High schoolers in the US are incredibly stressed about SAT and college application prep too, but its much worse in Asia where your entire life trajectory depends on a single set of exams that optimizes for maximal studiousness and pure g factor.
But I think stamina is something you can build over time. I also think it is a function of how interested one is in the work. I can work forever on some tasks, but some others are like chewing glass and I tap out in less than an hour.
in china this is called "eating bitterness", the idea of enduring hardship, overcoming difficulties, and forging ahead. it is not just academics, but everyone. it's chinese culture essentially.
Regarding stamina defined broadly as it is in this article: One of my favorite quotes comes from an unlikely source: Mike Tyson.
"I don't care how good you are at anything. You don't have discipline you ain’t nothin. Discipline is doing what you hate but doing it like you love it"
[1] Mike Tyson Fighter's Coldest Quotes Of All Time https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fz9JUENem78&t=100s
> It’s contributing as part of a team that, let’s say, has posed a challenging experience for all involved. It’s returning for another go at a problem that has repeatedly turned your mind into oatmeal ... It’s the ability to chip away at goals despite a lack of visible progress.
To bring in some LinkedIn-level grandstanding here: I deeply agree, especially with this part of the quote, when it comes to leveling up my career in software. The problems get more and more abstract and muddied and the difference between engineer levels sometimes comes down to who gives up and who doesn't.
This reminds me of one of my favorite quotes I try to live by..
"Tenacity is a most underrated quality in life. We all speak about talent, intelligence, glamour. But tenacity is the common thing for every successful person in life. Maintain that motivation to go from A to B and to keep your focus on that target without any weakening. That is called tenacity; stamina in your motivation." - Arsene Wenger (Legendary Arsenal FC Coach)
Of course, you also need to have chosen a good target. Especially when the trait under discussion is about doggedly sticking with the target!
I think the “of course” (involuntarily) assumes that you have to choose a good goal, which, looking at the world, is by no means a given.
Many people show tenacity, persistence, and even obsession, but they choose wrong or mediocre goals, at least if we consider traditional “success” as a "good target". And I'm not referring to people who spend hours and hours scrolling through social media, showing tenacity, persistence, and unusual resistance to boredom, but to those who spend enormous energy, effort, and time trying to get a minor job promotion that would earn them an extra 10K a year, along with the satisfaction of having given their work arch-nemesis a hard time, instead of using the same energy, effort, and time to earn 100K more a year elsewhere.
I see tenacity and stamina in people who every day look for the best, the most “optimal” diet that will allow them to finally reach the best shape of their lives, instead of using the same stamina to resist a little hunger when they choose and follow the most effective way to lose weight, which is to eat less.
If I look back on my life, one of my biggest regrets is not having chosen better and bigger goals for my efforts: I spent a lot of time and energy trying to make relationships work, instead of using the same time and energy to find someone more compatible with me; I spent energy, time and willpower to get excellent grades in school, without thinking too much about whether those excellent grades would lead me to the professional career I aspired to; I spent years working tirelessly toward the dream of an academic career, before realizing that I did not want to work with students that much, my research was not that groundbreaking, and I wanted to earn much more money than what an academic career could offer.
Choosing the right goal is by no means a given.
Habits beat stamina any day of the week
In other words, the virtue of perseverance.
Aquinas addresses the virtue of perseverance and the vices opposed to perseverance in Q.137[0] and Q.138[1] of the Summa, respectively. A virtue here is "a habit that directs us to do something well, or to omit something". Perseverance allows us to avoid forsaking "a good on account of long endurance of difficulties and toils".
As a virtue, it holds the mean between the errors that flank it on either side, avoiding effeminacy and delicacy on the one hand, and pertinacity on the other.
Effeminacy "withdraws from good on account of sorrow caused by lack of pleasure, yielding as it were to a weak motion", while delicacy "is a kind of effeminacy", but while effeminacy "regards lack of pleasures [...] delicacy regards the cause that hinders pleasure, for instance toil". In other words, effeminacy shrinks from things, because of the lack of pleasure, while delicacy shrinks on account of the discomfort caused.
Pertinacity holds on "impudently, as being utterly tenacious". It resists course correction.
[0] https://aquinas.cc/la/en/~ST.II-II.Q137
[1] https://aquinas.cc/la/en/~ST.II-II.Q138
Right, so persevere correctly, but don't persevere incorrectly. That would indeed be correct, top tip there Aquinas.
I'm reminded of the sunk cost fallacy.
Modern readers seem to misinterpret writings by virtue ethicists as self help, perhaps because much of modern "philosophical" discourse is just disguised therapy books. These are descriptive, not prescriptive, when Aquinas says what perseverence means he doesn't tell you what to do to be virtuous, but what the virtue in itself is. Although there are some prescriptions in the Summa (see Ia IIae Q38 as a prime example), Aquinas mostly left the study of the building of virtue to other writers, as it is a secondary matter.
> These are descriptive, not prescriptive
Yes, as the aim is scientific (in the classical sense of the term), but he would be the first to reject the fact/value dichotomy. Meaning, the understanding of the good is understanding what is desirable.
Also, don't shrink away from toil or lack of pleasure- to an extent.
There is a different way to think about it which is that the work could in principle be better structured to automatically be associated with more pleasure.
Stamina without Persistence is rather useless. Applying persistence constructively is the major differentiator in my view. The notion that a majority of humans reach a level of effort, in daily life or their pursuits, where stamina becomes a factor is likely single digit percentage of the population, say in the US. Stamina maintaining an addiction or survival as a homeless person is not the same as multi-hour Twitch streaming, so to speak.
So how can I gain my stamina...
Stamina is often fueled by stimulant drugs which exert a toll on the user. I used five unique ones this morning, and I know it's going to be tough to get proper sleep. As long as one uses their time well, there is no substitute for work-life balance.
That sounds an awful lot like a complete lack of stamina, made up for by pharmaceutical intervention.
An analogous comparison: someone that has to wear a knee brace to exercise would not be said to have strong knees.
I would argue the original post is talking about stamina on a different scale. Stamina over years. Not over the course of a day or week, fueled by stimulants.
A journey of a thousand days starts with a single day, recursed until one eventually arrives at the destination.
Five? Pray tell!
Nothing crazy: #1 caffeine (4 coffee + 1 black tea + 1 green tea), #2 100% dark chocolate, #3 berberine, #4 noopept, #5 phenylpiracetam.
Sufficient sleep plus exercise could substitute for all of them, but then I wouldn't have more than two hours left for work.
An activity or thing that holds deep meaning to you personally will be the stimulant to one's stamina. Love for your child will allow you to take care of him/her despite being insanely sleep deprived. I think the concept is much more broader than just work.
Yes, exactly. The chemicals are intended to make up for the lack of immense love for the organization of the work.
That isn't stamina, but perhaps a corrective for the lack of stamina. The stimulation is meant to increase pleasure, hence making it easier to stick with something. Stamina means the ability to endure the lack of pleasure in pursuit of the good.
That sounds like a false dichotomy as it's suggesting that pleasure may not coexist with the good. Typically they do coexist. Typically it is pursuit of the good that brings innate pleasure. If there is insufficient pleasure from work, it's typically because it's insufficiently good. The chemicals are an attempt to fill the gap.
> That sounds like a false dichotomy as it's suggesting that pleasure may not coexist with the good.
I didn't say they couldn't. But they don't always, for one reason or another. We're flawed, we have bad habits, we have vices, we have disordered tastes, etc. These can steer us away from the good toward destructive ends, even though they may provide us with a cheap and empty source of fleeting pleasure.
> If there is insufficient pleasure from work, it's typically because it's insufficiently good.
Continuing the thought above, there are plenty of things we know that are good for us that we nonetheless don't want to do. We struggle to do them, but this does not mean they are insufficiently good, not in the least! It means we are not sufficiently good. Perseverance (or stamina, to use the author's terminology) means enduring unpleasantness, even suffering, for the sake of the good. The more perfect a human being is, however, the more pleasure is aligned with the good, because a more perfect human being is better aligned with the good. Indeed, in a perfect human being, if the situation demanded it, suffering and dying for a worthy good would be a pleasure.
What is experienced as pleasure is not fixed and determined only by the object, but also conditioned by the subject. The reason is similar to the difference between good and bad taste. Good taste is an alignment with and receptivity to the objective good, while bad taste is rooted in dullness, or a disorder of receptivity, or whatever.